You are here

Firth completes season sweep of Aberdeen

ABERDEEN — The Firth Cougar basketball squad entered the Aberdeen Tiger den on Tuesday night, looking for a season sweep of their Bingham County brethren. At the end of a rapidly played contest, that is exactly what they got, as they won the cat fight with a decisive 58-37 victory.
"The second quarter was better but overall the first half was not especially good," Firth head coach Scott Adams said. "We still weren't executing offensively, we still weren't fully doing the things that we need to do discipline wise on both offense and defense but then in the third quarter we stepped it up. There is a certain way that I think that the game should be played and in the second half we did a better job of playing like that."
The teams played even throughout the opening stanza with Aberdeen getting strong play from their junior post Mike Wynn who was active on the interior, leading to a 12-11 Tiger advantage.
Aberdeen opened the second quarter with a quick bucket for a 14-11 lead, but then a giant blue switch was turned on as Firth simply took over, closing out the remainder of the period on a 15-2 run for a 26-16 half time lead.
"For whatever reason we just didn't have a lot of energy," Aberdeen head coach Cory Hollingsworth said. "Even in the first quarter when we played right with them it wasn't quite the energy that we need to play with. We have to be able to put it all together if we want too take that next step. It's one thing to play with the best teams but too be able to beat the best teams we can't do 2 things well and 2 things poor. We have too be able to put them all together and we didn't do that tonight."
That momentum spilled over into the second half as the Cougars rode that wave by opening the third period with a quick 8-0 run. A smothering full court press and some pin point passing on the interior led to several easy baskets and after a Kory Andersen three ball from the corner at the buzzer, Firth led by 22-points at 47-25.
"Basically in the first half we just came out kind of tired thinking that we were just going to kill them," Firth junior Austin Leslie said. "At half time Coach just told us to play Firth Cougar basketball which is the way we know how too play. Play hard, talk on defense and do what we do. In the second half we played hard, stopped playing lazy and did what we were supposed to do."
Leslie led the charge on the evening for the Cougars with 17-points in the paint while Mitch Orme, who shoulder the bulk of the point guard duties tallied 15 on the night.
Fellow post, Kory Andersen also cracked double-digits with 12-points as Firth maintained their cushion throughout the remaining fourth quarter for the non-conference road win.
Up next for the Tigers is a big conference home date with Soda Springs on Thursday. Meanwhile, Firth will jump back into their conference play when they host North Fremont tonight for a 7 P.M. tip off.
"North Fremont have been beating teams, they beat West Jefferson the other night by 18," coach Adams said. "They like to shoot the three, they like to press, and like a lot of the teams that we play, they don't have anything to lose so we will have to play our best if we want too beat them."